Richard Dawkins is responding to what he called the "stirring towards atheism" in some Islamic countries with a programme to make free downloads of his books available in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian.
The scientist and atheist said he was "greatly encouraged" to learn that the unofficial Arabic pdf of the book had been downloaded 13m times. Dawkins writes in The God Delusion about his wish that the "open-minded people" who read it will "break free of the vice of religion altogether". It has sold 3.3m copies worldwide since it was published in 2006 – far fewer than the number of Arabic copies that Dawkins believes to have been downloaded illegally.
Richard Dawkins to give away copies of The God Delusion in Islamic countries
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday March 25 2018, @02:19PM (4 children)
I don't think that I do. While his book and idea might be about ALL religion, if you make official translations into Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian then it's not about ALL religion anymore, in that particular case it really does become all about one specific religion and not all of them.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday March 25 2018, @03:28PM (1 child)
Wrong. Can't you see the problem with that line of reasoning? And have you read any of Dawkins' work?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday March 25 2018, @05:42PM
I have. But we are talking about two completely different things here. You are talking about Dawkins, his idea(s) and his book(s). I'm talking about the translation to specific languages that are quite clearly targeting a specific population and I do believe it is going to be problematic. There are not a lot of Christians, Hindus or Buddhists that are going to read the Arabic translation of The God Delusion or River out of Eden. So my point was that perhaps he should have a chat with Rushdie before going down this path, I don't believe that living under a death threat for the last 30 odd years was what he had in mind when he wrote it. The targeted audience clearly take this a bit more serious then the rest of us.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:06PM (1 child)
I disagree. While I'm not very high on proselytizing of any sort, your argument implies that since this book is published in the languages used by adherents of Abrahamic religions [wikipedia.org], that Dawkins' book is aimed at Abrahamism, not just Islam.
Also, the book has been published in languages used by Christians for quite a bit longer than it has been published in languages used by Muslims.
If Dawkins' book was aimed at ALL religions, it would also be translated into Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese, Swahili, Amharic, Yoruba, etc., etc., etc. as well.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 25 2018, @10:34PM
@RichardDawkins [twitter.com] says "the most evil religion in the world has to be Islam.” That's so true, isn't it? But believe me, there's no love lost between him and @VP [twitter.com] Pence!